I Am an Atheist

I am an atheist.

Up until a matter of weeks ago, I was unable to string those four words together in that order. There was no doubt that I was an atheist, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it. It sounded fake. All day long I live, act, and speak as a Christian, hearing about the evils of atheism. I’m so dishonest with everyone I come in contact with, save for my loving atheist boyfriend, that when I’m alone I can barely be honest with myself. “What are you?” he would ask me when everyone was out of earshot. “Say it. You’re not a Christian. You don’t have to lie.”

I eventually swallowed my disgust with myself and mustered a whisper: “I’m…an atheist.” Being nearly impossible to admit does not make this statement any less true. Going to an oppressively Christian private college does not make it any less true. Attending mandatory chapel services does not make it any less true. Bowing my head for prayers before classes does not make it any less true. Being a part of a resolutely Lutheran family and coming to church every time I come home does not make it any less true.

In fact, these circumstances make my atheism stronger. The more I learn about the bible and Christian theology, the more flaws I find and the more I want to learn about my own beliefs. Being forced to act like a Christian and outwardly accept what everyone believes simply adds fuel to the flame of my atheistic fervor.

The only problem is that I only know one atheist other than myself. I have almost no outlet for my discoveries or my questions. I hope that this blog acts as a way for me to go from being a rogue atheist to a member of a community of individuals who are either in a situation similar to my own or who were brave enough to be able to come out. I intend to share my experiences and discoveries with you as I make my way through works of atheistic literature, learn more about natural science, and form my own opinions and lifestyle choices based on my beliefs.

Related

80 Replies to “I Am an Atheist”

I am so thankful that I found your blog (or rather you found me haha). I’m not going to lie to you and say we have the same view, but I hope to learn more about such a touchy topic as this. Many times us christians shy away from all topics of atheism and that’s not always the proper way to handle it, I am still fairly young but I seek to grow upon my knowledge. Many of the people around me are atheists and the only thing I can really do is love them the way God loves them. I’m excited to learn more to be able to handle such topics without arguing and learning a bit more patience with them by seeing the struggle they experience. Jesus did not treat these people poorly, and we have no right to treat others that way.

Ahh, I can see why that would be frustrating. Usually topics like religious differences are somewhat off limits. For me I am the complete opposite but I’m still in the same boat of not being able to comfortably talk religion with people around me because we all disagree. My blog is a place where dissenting voices are welcome when it opens each others’ eyes to different views, and disagreeing isn’t off limits. So I hope if you stick around, you experience that, too!

Hello, I’m not an atheist… I’m not a Christian either. I don’t even really know what I am; the closest label I’ve found is deist. Of course, I am viewed by Christians as the same thing. I can relate to what you’ve said. Being anything other than Christian in this country does seem to be frowned upon.

It was an interesting experience to know about you. Like you, the more I researched about my religion, the more suffocated I felt. I didnot want to follow it but I had to, due to my orthodox religious family. I had to make a tough decision of coming out and revealing it to my family and friends. my friends ridiculed me and said I would burn in hell and that ‘god’ would punish me. I was scared and depressed for a very long time. However now I have slowly recovered and found happiness sharing and learning about similar experiences of fellow atheists and secularists. It feels like freedom finally!! We need each other’s support in thick and thin of our journey !!

Wow. You and I are on a very similar timeline and path though I’m likely much older than you. Trust me; it will be easier to solidify this part of you now than later when you become so deeply entrenched. Love and hugs from someone else on the same road. I admire your courage.

You have written a very good heartfelt piece here. Although, I do not share your same experiences, I do feel for you. I did not have to shed a childhood religion, but I will say that I slipped in to Christianity for awhile related to being in AA for my drug and alcohol addiction (which by the way I have beaten without either). It was a slow climb out of tis belief, but eventually I emerge finding real meaning in life and a peace of mind I think only a few Christians ever obtain.

I want to recommend a book for you and anyone in a like situation: “Leaving the Fold” by Mariene Winell. It is available at amazon.com.

Thank you for the follow of my blog. I have looked at this trail of comments here with great interest. We are all on a journey that invariably leads us to question and challenge values and beliefs we grew up with. For some they reach a place of acceptance and comfort with it. For others it becomes a journey of searching for more answers.
For me? I long ago came to the conclusion that there is a distinct difference between religion and spirituality. The former is a manmade construct with all its foibles and flaws. Its not all bad of course. There are many genuine, heartfelt and sincere people to be found there. The latter is a deeper and far more personal relationship with whatever people choose to call God. I have found my place in that.
I wish you well on your journey 🙂

Earlier I thanked you for following sciencesprings . You “liked” my comment. Just, you should know, I am not an atheist. While not an ardent follower of any organized religion, I am Jewish. But my spiritual guide is the 12th Catholic mystic Meister Eckhart and his grund theology. No Christology, just the mixing of the ground of one’s soul with the round of God’s soul, which comes down to live a good life.

I’m not attacking you. I’m obviously not an atheist, and I would claim to be a really strong Christian myself. The reason I’m commenting is because I’m wondering what made you become an atheist. Like, I know it wasn’t just one thing. I’m just curious on why you became an atheist.

Hi, and thanks for asking! Firstly, I would recommend that you take a look at my posts Journey to Atheism: Parts 1 and 2 to learn about what initially sparked it and what has helped me to become more well-rounded in it. Other than that, I would say that I don’t think I was ever really a Christian. Since I was old enough to think logically and critically, I’ve always seen something fishy with the way that the bible is scientifically inaccurate in so many ways. That, and the idea that science can explain almost everything so far without needing a deity to explain things, made me begin to doubt that there is a God, and that doubt fully developed into agnosticism and eventually atheism when I started taking classes, researching, studying, and learning more on my own about it.

I read Journey to Atheism parts 1 and 2, and I have a few comments on your journey. 1) I think your mom was wrong. My parents taught me that it was OK to question things, but when I do, I should find the answer. Like, if I was to question why the universe was expanding if there wasn’t a big bang, I would look and find that the Bible says in Genesis that God is stretching out the universe, so the expanding universe fits the creation model. Also, I remember being taught evolution in school. I remember how the teachers always made it seem illogical not to accept evolution, and I would often become discouraged and started doubting myself. However, I would try to find why evolution couldn’t be true and really got into creation science and apologetics and all my questions were answered. I think a big problem is that Christians aren’t being taught the answers in church or Sunday school. Most church kids go to public school and here about evolution and they have no idea how to defend , so they accept it. It is the church’s fault. They need to teach the congregation the very easy answers to the questions evolutionists ask.

You just plainly admitted to basing your position on confirmation bias. “I would try to find why evolution couldn’t be true…”

You aren’t trying to find truth, you are trying to find arguments that can be used to support what you want to believe, regardless of whether they are true. Honest creationists will caution you against claiming that evolution is a “failed” hypothesis or that it isn’t supported by evidence. They will tell you that it is very well supported, and very successful, because that is the truth. Anyone who says otherwise is either lying or seriously misinformed.

-Why birds and baleen whales, which do not have teeth, still have the gene for tooth enamel.
-Similarly, why chicken embryos develop reptilian snouts with teeth, reptilian tails, and dinosaur-like arms when you merely turn off the genes that control development of the beak, bird tail, and wings (meaning they still have the genetic code to develop a dinosaur body plan, it’s just been suppressed).
-Literally millions of other examples like the above, where animals have genetic code that is useless to them, which we would expect if evolution were true.
-How evolution and old-earth geology predicted the location of a fish/amphibian transition fossil, which was then found right where we expected it to be.
-Why the left recurrent laryngeal nerve in every mammal goes down into the chest and wraps around the aortic arch before going back up to the larynx, whereas the right one takes a more reasonable direct path (this is clearly explained by looking at the path of this nerve in fish, and the lack of any mechanism to cause it to reroute as animals developed necks). In giraffes this nerve is fifteen feet long, even though the distance it travels is merely a few inches.
-Why our eyeballs are so poorly “designed” compared to octopus eyes.
-Why our feet are essentially modified hands, full of tiny bones that make them poorly suited to bipedalism and cause numerous painful conditions, while ostriches and other animals with much longer histories of bipedalism are so much better adapted to it.
-Why the biomass in the earth’s crust is somewhere around 3000 times greater than the current mass of all living things, when it was supposedly deposited there by a single global flood…and that’s just the small percentage of organic material that happened to be buried and preserved instead of decomposing and being recycled.
-Why almost all vertebrate fossils are dearticulated, and why articulated fossils (which indicate rapid burial) are extremely rare, when the opposite would be the case if they were all buried by a flood.
-Why different types of animal fossils exclusively occupy different layers of rock that can be dated using several independent methods that all agree with each other.
-The sheer number of different species, which are far too many to fit on Noah’s ark, which forces people like Ken Ham to adopt a ludicrously fast and efficient version of evolution (something like 11 new species every day, at the very minimum), which is somehow constrained by the divisions humans have drawn between different “types” of animals despite those divisions not existing in the real world.
-The existence of numerous water-dwelling species that would’ve been exterminated by the mixing of fresh and salt water in a global flood, and the ensuing massive destruction and change of their delicate ecosystems.
-Why giant insects existed when their mere survival requires a level of atmospheric oxygen that would kill mammals, making it impossible for both types of life to exist at the same time.

I could go on for a long time, because just about every organism has strange quirks that fit evolution perfectly, but make no sense in the creationist model. If the life on this earth was created by a deity, he was lazy, incompetent, malicious, and deceptive. And that claim can be backed up by enormous amounts of evidence.

Have I ever stated I was not biased? Of course I am biased. However, I claim evolution is a failed hypothesis because that I exactly what it is. It is a hypothesis that failed. The creation way of natural selection by kind has held up and had acquired many pieces of evidence. However, natural selection advancing beyond animal kinds (a kind is defined by most creationists as the family classification) by mutations has been disproven. In fact, every piece of evidence ever presented for evolution has been disproven. Like the nonsense you posted above. Birds and baleen whales having a gene for tooth enamel even though they do not have teeth is being used as evidence for evolution. When I read that I was actually surprised you were using this for evidence for evolution. We know of many birds some extinct some not with teeth ( archeopteryx, Greylag Goose, toucan chew, and many more) same for whales. This makes a lot of sense for the biblical natural selection model. Using this for evolutionary evidence (if it wasn’t so ignorant) is laughable.

In fact, I found many sources online stating that the left recurrent laryngeal HAS to be like that. (Can share sources if you’d like) also quotes by many scientists on the field backing it up. Also on what you said about eyeballs, you’re joking right? On them being poorly designed I mean. They are literally some of the most complex parts of our bodies. There has also been no evolutionists who has adequately described eye evolution. Also your point of bipedalism does not to further evolution being anything but a failed hypothesis but I’ll discuss it anyways. humans were designed by God to have feet. Our feet are wonderfully made by him and are actually pretty good for humans.

Also I’d like your source on the earth’s biomass because what I found stated the biomass was ALOT less than what you stated. Actually, most fossils aren’t deteriated much at all. In fact, most are found with muscle tissue, brain cells, etc. They show great evidence for rapid buriel mist have evidence for water buriel. Also the different animals in layers is easily explained by many creationists. To summarize animals were at, of course, different areas. The fossil record does show MANY fossils of evolutionary species that shouldn’t be there for millions of years. Actually the model Ken Ham supports (which is a biblical idea held up by science) is EXTREMELY accurate and has an amazing amount of evidence. He never said 11 new species every day. Bill Nye falsely said that about him.

These water-dwelling species is the result of natural selection after the flood. Also gonna need your source on the giant insects. Although that is easily explained by which kinds were there at the time. I believe that is every point you made. Evolution still doesn’t add up. It is still a failed hypothesis that cannot stand. While the creation model still stands unrefuted.

You’re gonna need a lot more than “sources”, since you’ve decided to believe a whole bunch of lies rather than actually investigating the issue. I was raised to be an ignorant little creationist, and it worked until I came into contact with reality, at which point I instantly saw the gaping holes in the creationist model and rejected it. Hopefully someday you stop listening to liars and pay attention to the real world.

No evolution is flawed and impossible. I posted about this before, but it is mathematically impossible to happen. Natural Selection is a biblical idea and a scientific fact. Saying it can progress into evolution is utter nonsense. There is a lot of reasons for the nerve I mean. Many scientists give detailed reasons online. It is a flawed earth so our eyeballs (while complex) have flaws as well. My God is definitely not incompetent. Feet themselves are rather complex. Also, it isn’t a perfect world.

You are wrong. It is entirely possible. The “impossibility” you are citing is an argument I’m /very/ familiar with…and it’s all a big lie based on a complete misunderstanding of the process. Evolution is a scientific fact. Your claims prove that you don’t understand anything about it, because they are patently ridiculous to anyone who does understand it.

You know I actually thought you were being honest and actually believed what you were proposing until you stated evolution is a fact. Although I don’t agree with the classification, it is classified as a theory not a law (fact). Saying it is a fact is willful ignorance

Go educate yourself about what “theories” and “laws” are in science, because you’re still repeating basic creationist lies that have been debunked long ago. A theory is an explanation for the facts. Evolution itself, the process of organisms changing over time due to natural selection, mutations, and other things, is a fact, as it has been repeatedly observed in action and verified using genetics. Evolutionary theory is the collection of data and explanations that tell us how it happens.

I know what all the terms are. Evolution is definitely not a fact. You actually spoke some truth when you stated that it is an explanation for the facts however you left out that it is a really bad one that has been debunked. You need to learn what a theory and law is. Theory Is a idea backed up by evidence (evolution isn’t this) a law has enough evidence to be a fact. Saying evolution is a fact would be laughable if it wasn’t so sad that some actually believe this.

Evolution has not failed. It has succeeded in pretty much every way. Saying otherwise proves you are either a liar or you are utterly ignorant of the research and science that has been done.

Accepting natural selection while rejecting evolution is like accepting that we age a little every day and rejecting that someday we’ll be old and wrinkled. Evolution is a logical, mathematical, and demonstrably provable result of natural selection over time.

There is no reason the left recurrent laryngeal nerve has to wrap around the aortic arch, except that it had no other option when animals evolved necks.

Our eyeballs have fundamental flaws that can cause blindness and other problems, flaws that are not present in other animals like the octopus. You might want to educate yourself before you blab all over the internet about these things.

Any engineer could design feet that are better than the ones we have, which means your god was incompetent. Your response to this one is laughably ignorant. You suppose that a perfect and all-powerful god gave us feet that are poorly constructed for bipedal locomotion, which makes no sense. “Pretty good” is not perfect.

The biomass amount that I quoted is accurate. What you found is a lie. Zero fossils have ever been found with muscle tissue or any sort of cells. The only soft tissue found in fossils has been collagen, which can last a very long time. Again, you are citing lies. I’m familiar with the actual discoveries, and have read papers by the people who discovered them. You are quoting dishonest creationists who lied about what those papers say.

I’m not going to give you sources, because I know how you deal with them. You ignore everything that contradicts what you want to believe and you believe everything that confirms it. That is the only way to convince yourself that creationism is “unrefuted” and evolution is “completely debunked”. Honest creationists admit that there are things evolution explains that creationism doesn’t have a verifiable answer for.

You are not honest. You are ignorant and dishonest, and if you want to be taken seriously, you need to actually educate yourself on the topic and stop merely asserting your beliefs as if they are true.

Then why do they constantly claim that scientific papers say the opposite of what they actually say? Whenever a creationists cites a scientific paper to support a claim, I go read it. In almost all cases, the claim they are making is contrary to what the paper actually says. Creation scientists are con artists profiting from your gullibility.

Additionally, the “11 species a day” is the absolute minimum that is mathematically possible in a young earth timeline. It doesn’t matter if Ken Ham didn’t say it. It’s the inevitable answer if you do the math using the things he DOES say. The length of time his worldview allows for speciation, combined with the lowest estimated number of species that exist today, tells us that we must have gotten eleven new species every day. That is the absolute minimum required to produce the diversity of life we observe today in the timeline provided by young-earth creationism.

Oh, and “deteriated” is not a word. Almost all vertebrate fossils are disarticulated, meaning their bones are jumbled. This happens because they died on the surface, decayed, and the bones got moved around before they were buried and fossilized. Fully articulated vertebrate fossils, which indicate more rapid burial, are indeed rare, and saying otherwise betrays your ignorance.

Not a lie, and your claim here is completely false. You are the ignorant one. But it’s up to you if you want to actually investigate the subject, or continue confirming your false beliefs by reading the lies of con men.

I have investigated, which is the problem with believing you. In fact, I used to believe all the same things you did, and I threw it all out precisely because I investigated. I honestly wanted to know the truth. By your own admission, you did not. By your own admission, you used a method that is unreliable and likely to reinforce any falsehoods you believe. Therefore, my results are more likely to be true, since I used a method that has proven to be the most reliable for finding truth.

Now go educate yourself, or keep making a fool of yourself, whatever you prefer. I’m done with this stupid argument over science that was already established by huge amounts of data decades ago. This argument only continues because of a few con men in the 20th century who made a lot of money selling dishonest books to people who wanted to believe in creationism.

If you already have a ‘hunch’ that something like the age of the earth or fossils or dinosaurs never existed, then what you look for is not facts that support those things, but ‘facts’ that hand you what I call the great AHA! You are looking for something to disprove, not prove. Mason has some excellent points, and is well worth paying attention to.
In the same way, if you will, if you believe in global warming, and the temp today is 90 deg. in mid-July, you point to that with a certain smugness and say, “SEE?” If the ice at the north pole is melting (oh, the humanity, oh, the polar bears) you blithely ignore the fact, measured and proven, that the ice at the SOUTH Pole is alive and well.

You will believe what you expect to believe. It’s a very easy but often dangerous thing to discount what does not fit your hypotheses of the earth and evolution, carbon dating, and dinosaurs. And people tend to make up stories about such things, to prove their own beliefs. it makes them more comfortable.

This reminds me of the question in the Nye-Ham debate of “What would change your mind?” and Nye said “evidence” and Ham said “nothing.” We would have nothing to lose by not accepting evolution as true, but we accept it because it is a testable, predictable scientific theory. If some evidence were to show up that disproved evolution (like a single fossil being in the wrong place), scientists would say “alright, so that wasn’t it. Okay, let’s keep testing.” No harm, no foul. But we accept it because we have evidence, even though we aren’t being forced by a deity who would send us to hell if we don’t believe.

Similarly, it would make sense for creationists to be less willing to change their minds (considering that creationism, unlike evolution, does have substantial evidence against it) even though the literal biblical account has been disproven. According to Christianity, there is a lot to lose if you don’t believe in the Genesis account of creation. Therefore, when a God-fearing creation scientist finds evidence contrary to what the bible teaches, instead of saying “oh well, I guess that was wrong,” they must say “oh… well, it’s still right, but now I have to find a new way to incorporate (ignore) this new evidence so that my belief still makes sense.”

Hi ClosetAtheist. I saw that you have decided to follow my blog. I guess I’m responding more out of curiosity than anything. Whatever the reason, thanks for dropping by. Hopefully you will find some answers you are seeking.

In response to this post, you wrote, “The final straw came when my dad died in his sleep, and mother called the local priest to come to give him extreme unction. The priest refused on the grounds that if the body was cold the spirit had fled, but he did offer to read her the prayers over the phone…”

I would just say that Christianity and religion are two very different critters. Jesus too had a problem with those who practiced religion but had no clue about relationship with the Father. With that said, I too despise religion. Hopefully, if you decide to read any of my posts you will see that Christianity is far more than a bunch of man made rules that are impossible to live by. Again, thanks for dropping by.

nahh no problem, patrick, I’ve done the same thing too. It’s dreadfully embarrassing, but at least it shows someone was paying attention to the words, if not the writer. And WP is easy to get mixed up over. Too much going on all over the place, I guess…

Hello! I’m honored that you’re following my blog, and I hope you find some value in my rambling. I like to check out the blogs of people who follow me, and I’m impressed by your writing. I’m hoping to run some guest posts by other ex-Christians, so if you’d like to write one about your experience I’d be happy to post it. You can contact me at lynchthemasonjar@gmail.com

Welcome to the WP community. I can relate to many things you wrote. I denounced Christianity in 2000, and deconverted from god-belief in 2005. But I didn’t call myself an atheist until about 3 years ago. Part of the reason had to do with self-preservation, as I live in the most conservatively religious state in the Union. If I lived in a less religious state, I’d have no concerns with being openly atheist in the community. Family-wise, it gets complicated. Although I told my family (parents and siblings) I no longer believed, they simply couldn’t process it. Neither could my now ex-husband.

The other part (hesitancy) had to do with the fact that I was once so damn sure god existed, in particular, the Judeo-Christian god, that when I realized it was just another religious myth, it was humbling. So I gradually studied my way from theism, to deism, to agnosticism, and then atheism. That doesn’t mean that I’m not open to the possibility of there being a creator. There might be, but we simply don’t know. However, the fact that all these god constructs require faith and money, lots of money, speaks volumes.

One other thing; if you do decide to ‘go back’ or try out a different religion; the ‘no shame no blame’ tag goes with you. Curiosity is what drives us all, at one time or another, and having freed yourself of one religion, you may want to see what else is out there.
It’s a very big world, and there are hundreds of religions and belief systems.

Welcome! The first step to any journey is … the first step. Realize that after you have tried out an atheistic mindset, you are not trapped, you can adopt any faith you wish thereafter. I would argue, though, that the problem with all religions is “faith.” Faith seems to be painted as a “positive thing” but I see only paint with nothing underneath. The word is supposed to mean trust and the people who are recommending that we “trust” them and their message have proven themselves to be untrustworthy over and over again. But, welcome to the community of people who think that “it is all up to us” to make a better world for our children.

Neither road is easy, CA, but if you truly feel (I won’t say believe) that God has left the building for you, start thinking about how that makes you feel.

Not how other people might feel about it, or how they might feel about you. Without the strictures of a religion or a dogma you are truly free to travel your own path, scary as it may seem.

I grew up Catholic, even veered too close to the “I wanna be a num’ precipice, but backed up fairly quickly. By the time I was 19 or 20 the church had changed so fiercely it was no longer the church of my childhood.

The final straw came when my dad died in his sleep, and mother called the local priest to come to give him extreme unction. The priest refused on the grounds that if the body was cold the spirit had fled, but he did offer to read her the prayers over the phone…

And one day I realized I simply had no interest or desire for any of it. I am an atheist, I said, to myself. then I said it out loud. And that was when I understood that all of my choices were made by ME, all of my mistakes were made by ME, and it was one of the most empowering feelings I ever had.

Timothy, that is one of the more generous responses I have seen, anywhere.

I could say I grew up Christian as well, but it was more like I grew up in a Christian household and believed it until I was old enough to truly question it.

It is extremely empowering to be able to say it to myself, and I love being an atheist. That itself makes me feel really great. The hard part is having family, friends, and classmates talk about how immoral or untrustworthy atheists are when they don’t know that they’re talking to one. It makes me feel guilty.

I’m still making my way towards being nothing but proud of it. It takes a lot of strength to always remind myself that no matter what, this is what I believe is true and it doesn’t make me a bad person, but I am getting there.

We live in NH; no one really discusses religion here, not in that ‘in yo’ face’ way, frankly I have no idea which if any of my friends and even family are religious or atheist. We do keep our religion and our politics pretty close to our chests, here. Basically it’s whatever need you have to talk about it.

And in here there are a lot of people willing to equably discuss it. GodlessCranium is a good place, he’s pretty open to this sort of stuff.

Don’t feel guilty about it when they discuss the ‘godless heathen atheists”, because you know better, and that’s what matters.

Thank you, The Closet Atheist, for following my blog, Catholic in The 21st Century.

Since I’m a Catholic and you’re an atheist, we obviously see the world differently. But if there’s anything I can do to help you on your journey as an atheist, just let me know.

I believe that God wants us to question, to search, to wonder. Qestioning, searching, and wondering – not believing because you’re told to but because you see belief as logical – is something to take pride in.

It is hard to be in a community where no one else shares your beliefs and you have to find answers for yourself by questioning, searching, and wondering. I appreciate the support as I search for answers!